Doppelganger
by seekerchasing
Summary: One night when Damon is sleeping she drives a stake through his heart. Elena/Damon/Katherine
1. one

One night when Damon is sleeping she drives a stake through his heart.

Quite literally, of course, not metaphorically in the slightest. It doesn't entirely make sense but it's not as if she's never done it before. Maybe it's because she wants to see the look on her face when she comes around. Because she never stops coming. She will never leave them alone. She knows who Damon truly loves and it isn't her. It will never be her.

He will always be in love with her doppelganger.


	2. two

**AN**: sorry, not a new chapter, I just split chapter one into two parts so I could have a prologue. Chapter 3 will be really soon though.

* * *

><p>Katherine stares at Damon's body. He deserves this, for what he's done to her. He got over her, moved on and she would never forgive him for that. And now she doesn't have too. It's a win-win situation. She doesn't have to know he exists and he doesn't have to live every day without his <em>precious Elena<em>.

Speak of the Devil. Not that she hadn't heard her coming; this was what she had been waiting for after all. This is the time for Elena to suffer, to know that this is her fault, and more importantly that Damon never loved Elena. In other words, it's time to lie like the psychotic bitch everyone knows Katherine is. She smiles, and hears Elena's intake of breath when her dull human eyes see what Katherine is leaning over.

Katherine starts humming.

"What have you done?" Elena says shakily, from behind her.

She sounds as though her whole world has fallen apart and Katherine rolls her eyes, "Shut up, Elena. It's no concern to you."

"No concern to me?" Elena says angrily, "You staked him. He's dead. Don't you get that? He's dead and he won't be coming back. I thought you loved him."

Katherine finally turns around. She reaches out and grabs Elena by the neck, and brings out her fangs, staring closely at her doppelganger. Because Elena is her doppelganger, it's not the other way around, she is the first, and it's time everyone is reminded of that.

It's time they all start playing Katherine's game.

"No." Katherine says, "You thought you didn't love him. There's a huge difference."

Elena shakes her head, tears filling her eyes. She stares at Katherine in what appears to be disdain and wordless horror.

"Now, neither of us will have him." Katherine states, coldly. "And if you think about it, aren't we both better off for it?"

"You're wrong," Elena says calmly, with a hint of terrible fury, which makes Katherine smirk. "You're wrong about him, and you're wrong about yourself."

Her doppelganger is unbearably self-righteous. If she thinks she's about to save Katherine's soul, the girl is even stupider then her words make her appear.

"I'm not you, Elena. Don't let our faces fool you. I don't care." Katherine shoves Elena to the ground and walks over her towards the door. But she finds she has a few more things to say to this girl who thinks she can take anything that belongs to Katherine and get away with it. Have a happy ending. There is no such thing as happy endings in Katherine's world, especially for those she'd sooner rip apart than tolerate.

"I just don't care, and I never will care. I simply got bored of him. That's all there is to it." Her lips curl into a cruel smirk, savouring the devastated look on the face so similar to her own. Strange, the way they were so different. "I may have taken him away, but he was never yours to begin with. You know that, right? He hated you, in the end, for everything you couldn't be. Now, run along, I'm sure Stefan's waiting. And you no longer have any choice but him to care about. Enjoy your eternity of true love."

Before she could leave the room, her doppelganger grabbed her arm with a pitiful strength. Nonetheless, Katherine snarled and turned around yet again. "You've got a lot of fire in you, you know. It won't get you anywhere but dead."

"He didn't deserve this." Elena stared back at Damon's desiccating body, a blank, stricken expression on her face.

Katherine sighed, resisting the urge to just snap her neck and be done with it. But that wouldn't be very good revenge for… what Elena had done, "Oh, come on, Elena. Are you blinded by love, or really that stupid? Damon deserved everything he got and more."

"You didn't deserve him."

"I never deserve anyone." Katherine confided, with a condescending grin, "Yet, I get them every time. Why don't you think about that one for a while?"

"Go to hell." Elena said, a raw tone to her voice.

"Maybe I should. But I always survive." Katherine taunted, "Rest assured, Damon will be there."

Elena choked on a sob, "Why did you do this?"

Her eyes burned into Katherine's identical orbs for a moment, reminding her of a time long ago when she herself cared so much, felt so much. Weakness, she knew. A weakness she couldn't afford, a pointless, painful weakness. Meaningless with it, meaningless without it. But she had left it behind, and Katerina Petrova did not look back.

Katherine Pierce played to kill. And Elena Gilbert would always lose.

"I already told you that. I grew tired of Damon. I'm sure you would relate, but you switch them up so often you don't have the time to weary of one. I used to do that."

"I am nothing like you," Elena emphasises every word and they echo around Katherine's mind, bringing her fully out of the past and right into the present. _I am nothing like you_, Elena says, does she?

_Good_, she thinks so quietly she almost doesn't understand herself, _stay that way_.

"Oh, believe me, that we can agree on. But, we do share certain… tastes, shall we say?" She beams at the still distraught girl, feeling triumph in her furious agony.

"If you're talking about Stefan-"

"And the lovely Damon too, of course," Katherine mocks, and then frowns, "Although he's not looking so lovely right now. My fault."

"Yes it is," Elena agrees. Her expression appears conflicted, but she seems to have made a decision as she opens her mouth and says, "Elijah."

One word is all it takes, and Katherine is slightly shattered. For the first time, she will admit she is unnerved. But this is one small victory, and the only one Elena will have.

"Excuse me?" Katherine intimidates, but is silenced by the confident look renewed in Elena's attitude. This is a battle of wills and intelligence, it seems. Perhaps Elena is not as weak as Katherine wrote her off as. Perhaps she is just strong enough to be crushed satisfactorily, to be a challenge before Katherine drains her dry of all vitality in a way that will please herself. She isn't entirely lying after all, when she says that life with Damon got boring.

It did.

And now, Elena is providing entertainment. Definitely an unforeseen development.

"Elijah told me about the two of you," her doppelganger tells her, spinning a story she can tell Elena is aiming to hurt at her very insides. A story full of truths and manipulations and painful to the core. History at its finest. "He said he loved you. He regretted it."

Cruelty. Another unforeseen development. Katherine realises she too has fallen into the trap of mistaking Elena for all that is pure and right about the world. She'd scorned her Salvatores for that, but apparently it had taken over her too.

"He said you believed in love, above all else. What happened to that you?"

Katherine smirks again, bitterly and twisted, regretful and delighted. "Didn't Elijah tell you the rest? What makes you think that my soapbox on love wasn't just more manipulations? What makes you think that those games you play yourself with my Salvatores aren't just manipulations?"

"See, you're turning this on me, now," Elena remarks, "What are you so afraid of? Why don't you want to feel? You could be happy."

Katherine sighs again. "You are tiring, Elena. And hasn't anyone ever told you, love is a vampire's greatest weakness? Because it's the truth. I am not weak, Elena. I choose to not be weak. You should do the same, if you want to survive."


End file.
